1:13 am

the house alarm goes off as I'm sound asleep. I've often thought about what I would do if it went off in the middle of the night and how I would instantly go into attack/survival mode: call 911, grab my mace in the nightstand, rush the animals out onto the deck, and then grab my cell phone (in case the phone lines were cut) and speed dial my next door neighbors, Frank and Jenny who are always home. Hell I'd probably even call Betty too just to make sure she's safe and on the look out.

But that didn't happen.

The alarm goes off, animals climb on top of me panting (Wrigs) and screeching (Chum) while I just lay frozen in bed, staring at the bedroom door like a deer in headlights.


Turns out all was ok, but I never got out of bed and I never went back to sleep.

Ninja warrior, I am not.

Going to be an interesting day...

Obsessed

I've seen the preview for this show, Obsessed and it brings back a lot of memories.

When I was in middle school thru jr. high I had OCD. Somehow, by some miracle, not drugs, I grew out of it. And when I watched this preview it's like it all comes back to me. I used to turn on and off light switches 20-40 times. Always had to be an even number. Same with opening and closing the screen door. I remember getting in trouble at school because I turned on and off the light switch in class and my teacher told me it costs 10 cents every time you open and close the circuit. I never forgot that. Maybe that's what helped me to stop because I felt bad that my parents were going to go for broke if I kept doing this at home. But the screen door was another story. My poor dog would be standing outside in the bitter cold, begging to come in and I would open and close the door just an inch or so 20+ times before I could finally fully open it and let her in.

There were other things that I did or things that really bothered me like certain fabrics on my wrists. I would go completely ape shit if the fabric on my wrist was tight and squeaked if I chewed on it. My poor babysitters. They never came back twice. I also did the counting repetition, like in the preview, but I always had to end on an even number. I would never end on number 3, cuz that's just weird. Ok I think I've said enough.

HMO and some kinda cheese

I was on the phone with my mom today and she was telling me about this preview she saw for a show she thought I should watch. She told me the date it will be on and said, "Make sure you record if it you're not home. It'll be on HMO".

I just replied, "Mom we don't get HBO."

Then later in the conversation she was referring to a situation and meant to use the expression, What am I? Chopped Liver? But of course, she was just a bit off on that one too and said, "What am I? Green cheese??" I said, "MOM! That makes no sense. It's not green cheese..." but before I could finish she said, "I didn't say GREEN cheese. I said CREAM cheese!"

It's like she has her very own language, all to herself.

Remember Me

Just watched Remember Me. It's pretty good.

Wrigely's butt

Wrigley sleeps between us at night. It's not very comfortable because Tom and I have to contort our bodies since Wrigs typically stretches to a diagonal position by our legs and feet. The past few nights he's been sleeping closer to our heads, but he lays butt first and positions it right in my face. Last night I tried to move him over towards Tom but Wrigs would not budge. Tom wakes up as I'm grunting, trying with all my might trying to move the dog. He says, "What are you doing?" I tell him I'm trying to move Wrigley. He asks, "Where?" I tell him, "Towards you." He says, "Don't you dare aim that blow out valve in my direction!"

Bottom line:
We need a bigger bed.

First day of summer!

started like this:


around noon time broke to this:



then a couple hours later went back to this:



It has been 271 days since we've hit 75 degrees. For some I know that sounds like a dream but for those of us who have spent the last 9 months living in what feels like a never ending January of wetness and darkness, it's really not so fun.

A friend sent me this link today and said this pretty much sums up summer in Seattle. Everyone is so ready to pop at this point. At least I'm not alone.

surviving vs. thriving

that's what it's like.

so
much
energy put into merely
surviving where
thriving used to come naturally.

Do you ever wonder why people don't retire
here and instead go
there? Yeah, me neither.

It's a different ball of wax here folks.

Time to make more t-shirts.

June 20th, 9am

Temps in the 50's, spitting rain, harassed by a homeless person on my way to a 5k with Wrigley this morning. I ended up turning around and coming home.

HAPPY F@CKING SUMMER!!!

Great Hair Day = Bad Hair Day

A while back I ordered this product because I was losing my hair. Well I tried it on my receding parts and it looked AWFUL. When Tom saw it for the first time he asked me if I just cleaned the chimney so I decided to chuck it under my sink because, as you know, I never return anything.

So about a week ago I ran out of one of my eye shadows which was just a neutral brown color and I thought why not give this hair stuff a try? So I did. And lately my eye lashes have been growing like mad.


I realize now this stuff is made with propecia which is supposed to prevent hair loss and from what it looks like apparently promotes hair growth? So this probably isn't a good thing to place directly next to my eye ball so needless to say no more great hair day for me. And I've been googling side effects for propecia and can't find anything about affecting vision but I'm guessing that's because most people probably don't stick the pill in their eye before swallowing it.

But wait, you could probably use this on eyebrows and not go blind? Ok I will try that next. And for whatever reason this product smells really delicious.

strange but true

So last night I had this really messed up dream about a guy I dated off and on back in college for about a year. It was pretty violent and disturbing so this morning I felt the need to check online and see if he is still alive and well. I tried to look him up on facebook (not to friend him just to see if he was there) and nothing. Then I checked google (yes, married women can still google exes, there is no law against this! yet) and I found a police report that cited he was recently arrested for stealing a bottle of Listerine. He put the bottle down his pants and tried to walk out of a Wal-mart.

I dated some winners.

how I wake up every morning

we've gone through quite a few alarm clocks over the years.

and another...

I've made no less than 30 shirts today. It's my new obsession. Almost missed a 1:00 meeting because I was online so engrossed in t-shirt making software. T-shirt making is highly addictive.

Another outlet...

t-shirt design.

I was a mean little sister.

I'm having the seniors put together a book about their life, something they can pass along to their children, grandchildren, great grandchildren. They're writing about significant moments, people, and memories that have shaped who they are today. This is something we can all start doing now, why wait til our golden years? I'm doing my own book and will share a brief chapter on terrorizing my sister.

I have a sister named Beth who is 7 years older than me - that's a big difference when you're growing up. While I was cutting the hair off my Barbies, she'd come home hammered from a night out with friends and pass out in her bed. My parents would get so upset and my mom would purposely vacuum her room at 7:00 the next morning, slamming the vacuum into her bed while Beth's trying her best not to hurl. Her punishment would be to stay in her room, no TV, no phone and I'd shove graham crackers or saltines under her door, anything that was flat enough to fit because she needed to eat. I can totally remember sliding a graham cracker half way under and then it would disappear in a flash as she swiped it from the other side. Then I'd hear munching and she'd say in a meek voice, "more." I used to torment my sister, not sure why, she was really good to me. She was scared to death of bugs (and of course, still is) and some mornings while she was asleep (hungover) I'd crawl in her room and leave a trail of fake ants across her bedroom floor, marching them into a giant glob under her bed straight down from her pillow. I would even put some food in the middle (like a cracker crumb) to make it look they were falling all over each other trying to feast and then I'd sneak into her room and scream, "OH MY GOD!" and point at the trail. She'd shoot out of bed like the house was on fire and she'd swear at the top of her lungs, "HOLY F*CKING SH*T LAURA!! WHAT IS IT? WHAT IS IT???" I'd burst out laughing then she'd fall back into bed trying to get her breathing under control while telling me I have serious problems. Sometimes I would do this with cockroaches and spiders too. We had a lot of fake bugs around the house, thanks to my Dad. Another time when she was laying out in our front yard (because our back yard was too shaded we were not exhibitionists) I snuck out of the house in my Dad's trench coat, big rubber boots and wore panty hose over my face so it was all distorted and then put on a big black hat with black leather man gloves. She was laying on the lawn chair, eyes closed, listening to music when I suddenly appeared over her with a growl approaching her neck like I was going to strangle her. She let out a blood curdling scream and just froze in place - didn't even try to run away. I fell to the ground in fits of laughter while she tried to catch her breath, again cursing my name and telling me I need to get serious help. That would make me laugh even harder. One of my favorite times though was when she was out way past curfew and my parents were asleep and didn't know. I turned her tv on in the bedroom so there was dim flickering light and put one of my Dad's big outdoor gloves on a bended hanger sticking out of her closet door and then I went to my room and waited. A bit later, I heard her quietly tip toeing up the stairs (we had a couple squeaky steps so you had to go very slow and know just where to put your feet) and then two seconds later, I hear the scream. I hid under my covers laughing and then felt bad because my Dad woke up thinking someone broke in the house and when he realized what happened, my sister got punished for coming home late. I felt bad about that but made it up to her by shoving crackers under the door the next morning.

I'm lucky she still talks to me.


(My Dad looks like a giant in this photo. I think our furniture was just really small. And I'm not so sure about the fit of his pants. Gotta love the 70's!)

update on Rose

I haven't talked much about the situation at the senior center with "Rose" the woman who has been homeless for almost a year. Reason being, I'm frustrated, mostly with myself because there is nothing I can do (short of moving her into our home.) When I first met with Rose and we talked one on one she seemed comfortable and mentally stable. She shared a lot with me and it started to feel like a therapist/patient relationship which was a bit concerning because a lot of the things she would tell me, I had no idea how to handle. I had done some research on shelters and church based organizations for the homeless, all of which she claimed had already "been there, done that" and would never return. I didn't know what else to do, some of the people at the center advised it would be best to pull back a little because they felt that Rose would get too attached and subsequently upset because I was not offering up my home as an option. So that's what I did and have been doing. And it feels pretty shitty.

The woman who I work for has been keeping me informed on any progress made with the social workers and psychologist and it turns out Rose was diagnosed with Asperger's. The thing about this is that she qualifies for government aid and can live in a state run facility but again she won't go. And now she's been asking a few people if they would let her stay in their homes and when they gently refuse she gets really angry and has had some major meltdowns. After class I used to mill around and visit with people or sit and have lunch but lately I've been nervous because if I see Rose I just don't know what to say anymore. I'm avoiding the situation because I'm afraid she's going to ask to come home with me. I can't blame her for asking people to take her in - homeless shelters and institutions are typically not ideal places to live, but those are the options available to her at this time and if she does not want them then that is her decision and there's not much more to do.

So why do I still feel like a horse's ass?

I always feel like...

somebody's watching meeeee!

Wrigs at the vet

This is the moment he realized, "Oh crap, it's this place!"

Poor guy. He had a pretty traumatic experience today. Struggled and fussed as 4 technicians and the doc tried to hold him down for xrays. It just wasn't going to happen. They got 2 somewhat readable ones, but I'll need to bring him back again sometime soon for the rest. The good news is his hips look good so that is a relief. Doesn't mean we can rule out hip dysplasia forever but at least there aren't any tell tale signs at this age. When I picked him up to bring him home he came barreling out of the exam room door almost knocking me over with licks to the face and high pitched cries. Then he made a bee line for the main door and kept pulling me while I tried to pay the bill. He wanted out of there. He's been sleeping a lot and actually now as I type this he is having another nightmare. He's squealing and twitching. Not sure if I should wake him up or let him sleep through it. Oh I can't stand it- he's breathing really heavy now. I'm going to wake him up.

Prayers for my sister

She's been in surgery since 8 this morning. Procedure was supposed to take 2 hours and it's now been 3.5 and still no update. My mom and brother in law are together waiting at the hospital and I'm sitting by the phone feeling an ulcer develop as I type.

Positive thoughts, vibes, prayers, whatever you can offer are appreciated.

Thank you.

golf, golf everywhere

Tom was using my lap top and I saw this strange message on the screen when he gave it back to me:

My first thought was "What the hell is a super deep?" It sounds very naughty. And then I see the "Tp tri" and I'm thinking maybe he's looking for super strength toilet paper? Which in this house, would make sense. But then at the bottom of the question I see it's about a DRIVER.

I'm glad that he has golf as an outlet because he needs it. And he doesn't care if it's pouring rain, sleet or snow, he will be out there no matter what. I asked him the other day, "What would you do if the courses were closed when it rains?" And he said without hesitation, "Move."

He was kidding. I think.

yet another golf show

"Someone" in this house is a bit too excited about this new show on the golf channel. He really seems to like the bikini shot interviews. I tell him we can NOT add another golf channel show to our television line up.

His response?

"Well I'll just watch it upstairs, alone...in bed."

If you give a puck...

then watch this!

GO HAWKS!

(totally jumped on the bandwagon for this but heck when you're from Chicago you have to celebrate a team that can actually win something!)

sheer white curtains

This is for those of you who have either commented on here, sent emails or facebook messages about suffering through the dark days of Seattle. Thank you for sharing your struggles and offering up suggestions. It helps to know we're in this together. :O)

So here is something I want to share with you. I went to Target and bought a bunch of ultra bright white sheer panels. They are $4.99 a piece and let me tell you, they really brighten up a room. I bought 6 of them and they really do add light. Makes these Juneary days a little less miserable, sort of.

I also bought that Beach Party candle, (you know, the one that almost killed me) and at first I LOVED it, it really did smell like the beach and sun tan lotion and all things tropical, but then about 20 minutes later I felt sick to my stomach and got a HORRIBLE headache. It's ok if you just leave the lid off and subtly catch a whiff as you walk by but lighting it is another story. Just thinking about the smell makes me feel sick again. Proves the point that it's virtually impossible to try and re-create nature but God willing when it comes to sunlight I'm going to keep trying!

Get these panels though. You won't be disappointed.

last night

While Tom's trying to sleep I'm laying next to him typing away on my lap top, Wrigs is laying between us chomping on this rubber toy (the squeaker is out but it still makes this annoying sucky sucky noise every time he bites down on it) and Chumley jumps off the bed onto his bear and humps him in plain sight while howling those primal cries of passion. Tom puts a pillow over his head and says, "I'm TRYING to sleep!"

I start laughing and then the bed starts shaking and the more he tells me to stop laughing the harder I laugh and the more shaking there is. He says, "I'm going to start sleeping in the other room." He gets up and grabs his pillow. I say, "Don't you dare, that's not good for a marriage. Plus, we'll all just follow you in there. There's no escaping us." Wrigs and Chum are now staring at Tom.

He slams back on the bed and shouts, "I LIVE IN A NUT HOUSE!"

Target

I'm creating an atmosphere of summer in my home so today I stopped at Target to get a beach smelling candle. Yep they have candles that smell like the beach so you can bring the beach to you anytime you want! So I found the candle and picked up the big one and took off the lid off to smell it and decided it was delightful but wanted to buy a smaller size. I put the big one back and picked up the smaller one (by the lid) and the lid popped right off and the jar crashed to the ground shattering the glass to bits. I felt my legs tingle a little, and then when I walked to find someone the side of my foot hurt. Of course there was no one close by so I'm limping around trying to find a red shirt to get a broom so people don't step on glass. I finally found a guy and told him what happened and he was pissed as we walked back to the candle aisle. I told him that I was going to buy the candle, I wasn't just testing it and he looked at the mess and said, "Stay here!" So I stood there waiting for him to return with a broom and as he swept I said to him, "I was going to buy that candle, I wasn't just smelling it. But the lid wasn't on all the way." No response he just continued to sweep. I reached for another candle and said, "I'll make sure to grab this one by the jar because the lid on that one wasn't on all the way. Maybe they should be taped down." Still nothing so finally I said "Ok then. I'm going to go now." And I gently put the candle in my cart and hobbled away leaving a few droplets of blood. Hope he knew I was cut.

Then as I was leaving the store I'm still kind of walking funny because I could really feel the glass in the side of my foot and my legs stung, when this punk kid ran past me and said, "You're too slow!" He was laughing so it wasn't like he was being an asshole about it so I said, "I have glass in my legs." I don't think he understood what I was saying because next he asked if I had a hybrid car so he probably thought I said something about gas, who knows.

Oh ok one thing that bugs me at Target or any grocery store for that matter: when you first walk in and grab the sanitizing wipe to clean off the handle of the cart, the cart is still pushed into all the other carts and will not become dislodged but you keep struggling because you just spent time thoroughly wiping off all the germs so you MUST HAVE THIS CART! It happens all the time. Why out of the 13 rows to choose from, always, the one you pick needs the jaws of life to get it unstuck. You seriously need to psyche yourself up to tackle the sea of carts. So then you give up on that one, grab another wipe and before it makes contact with any cart, you test for non jammed in carts and when you find one you yank it apart from the others, usually jarring your neck in the process but once freed, THEN you wipe it down. And sometimes when I'm pulling on a cart someone will offer me one but I don't like to take it if someone just used it cuz then the handle's all warm and sometimes moist and that skeeves me out. Like sitting on a warm toilet seat. Ick.


My Grandmother calls Target, "Targets."

recycling bins

Our recycle bin gets picked up every other Monday. More often than not when Tom and I are driving home on Mondays and we start to get close to our neighborhood we'll see recycle bins out at the end of a few driveways and we'll say, "Morons. Recycling is next week." (all in fun, of course) And then we realize, "Wow, everyone has their recycle bins out."

Who's the moron now.

Sweet golden boy

This morning when I let Wrigs out he was outside for a long time, which is unusual. I called for him to come in and no response. I put on my boots and headed down the steps to the yard and was starting to panic when I didn't see him. Then I walked to the side of the house and saw him laying on the ground licking something. He saw me, and looked up for a second and then gently went back to licking the ground. When I got closer I realized he was licking the back of a dead baby bird ever so gently. I had to pull him by the collar to get him away because he didn't want to leave the bird. He is the most loving, sensitive dog I've ever known (next to Newman). I thought to myself, "What did I do to deserve him? He is such a blessing." and then the next thought??? CHUMLEY. Wrigley is the balance to the little universe inside our home. The ying to the yang, the light in the darkness, the angel to the demon. So I guess we know what that makes Chum.

If Chum wasn't an indoor cat I would have thought he killed the bird in the first place.

Rest in peace sweet baby bird. One very sweet dog is thinking about you.

Dear Zachary

I watched this film twice, first by myself and then now with Tom and both times felt like I just finished running a mentally exhausting marathon. If you're up for pushing your emotional limits, then I recommend this documentary.

doll speak

On our 10 year anniversary Tom bought me a doll house. It was right around the time we found out about moving to Seattle so I haven't yet done much to it. When I returned this morning from my "day of thinking" retreat, he had it set up on the coffee table, with a roaring fire in the background, and he was going to install the electrical system. It was really sweet. We took the husband and wife doll and instead of talking to each other, used them to communicate and it went something like this:



wife:
Why do we live in a house with no walls?

husband:
Why are you wearing a cloth on your boobs?

wife:
I'm pretending it's summer. Why is your hair plastered to your face?

(Tom, real husband, not the doll, puffs up his hair and says, "It's from my golf cap." I say "Not you, him." and point to the doll. He says, "Oh." and goes back to his doll - he's obviously never played with dolls, but not that I'm complaining.)

husband:
Why do we only have 50 lbs of flour to eat? When was the last time you shopped for groceries?

wife:
Friday but you'd have to be here to eat it. Why is golf always on TV???

husband:
It's a tournament. Why do you have cankles??

(the real me says: "WHAT?")

(Tom says, "Not you. Her." and points to the doll.)

Likely story.

The exchange ended with wife doll picking up sack of flour and hurling it at husband doll's head.



Therapy comes in many forms.

Cutting the cord

I went to Bette's yesterday afternoon, ended up going alone because Tom's golf ran long (SHOCKING) but it's fine. I really wanted them to meet but there will be other opportunities, unless of course golf is involved. ANYWAY, I went to Bette's house for about an hour and 40 minutes. In the first half hour or so, I had my phone on vibrate and every few moments it would buzz. She asked what it was and I told her about text messaging. She was fascinated by it, as I was when I first discovered it about 7 or 8 years ago. So I explained to her that it's a way of communicating just like email but it comes through to your phone and shows up on your screen. She asked, "Why do you need that?" At first I thought oh well it's really important if you're running late or have to ask someone a question or just want to tell them something you might forget later. And then I realized ok 90% of my texts are never because of those things. They are mostly random statements about random things and are definitely not mission critical. "I'm wearing flip flops!" or "Wow Chumley just took the biggest dump!" is not going to change anyone's life. So Bette and I and went back to talking and sharing and again the buzz buzz buzzing kept going. I silenced my phone because it was distracting and annoying and for the next hour and 10 minutes I never checked it once. We bid our goodbyes and when I got in the car I had 34 new messages and had a message stating my text messages are full which means I need to delete some before others can be received. Sitting in Bette's driveway I'm trying to respond to the messages as fast as I can which began the vicious cycle of deleting, responding, new message! and again responding, deleting, new message! I could feel my heart start to race as I tried to keep up for a good 20 minutes before I realized how ridiculous this whole thing was and how since moving here I have become so attached to this stupid thing. I thought about Bette's question again regarding texting, "Why do you need that?" And right then and there was my answer, "I don't." A good portion of my life is tied to technology and sometimes it feels like running inside a hamster wheel. I deleted the rest of the messages and gave this more thought on other aspects of my life. Then I did something I have never done before and drove to a little Bed & Breakfast about a mile or so from my house and checked in, alone. I shut off my phone and literally disconnected from the world to just sit and think and not distract myself from the nonsense noise that I helped to create. The good news is, this is within my control and recognizing that made me feel lighter. I sat in the rocker with a glass of wine and did nothing but think and write out my thoughts with ZERO distractions for the rest of the day. And what came out was pretty fascinating. Tom came and joined me for a glass but then went back home because we both felt strongly this was something I needed to do for a while now. I continued to write alone in my little room and felt at peace.

I realized a lot about how I live my life during this little getaway and the one change I am going to make right now is to break away from the ties of technology. I've never been one who enjoys talking on the phone but I understand it's important and will allow for that when necessary. But I don't need texting. No one needs to be connected 24/7. Not to say I don't enjoy feeling close to friends and family, especially those far away, but somehow I survived 30 years without it and I want to live that way again. I'm home now and am actually enjoying time with Tom and the animals and never once felt the compulsion to dial in to technology. Well, I guess except for blogging about this right now, but really, it feels good - like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders.

Or maybe that's from the hour massage but hey, either way I'll take it!

tid bits

I keep forgetting that I'm not supposed to kill the ants! Do you know how hard that is? There aren't a lot of them right now, just a sparse few on the counters and in the sink but I ran the faucet so wash them down and realized crap! They're supposed to eat the poison, sorry guys :(, to take back to the queen so they must be kept alive. Oh well 3 down this morning.

Tom had a whirlwind week of travel and returned late last night and I asked him if he didn't mind going to Bette's house today for a visit and to help her around her house (not our neighbor Betty, this is Bette one of my senior students who fell and broke her femur a couple months ago.) He said "Sure." He is so kind and always giving of himself. Bette just recently got a chair lift installed in her house and told me that she wants me to take a ride in it. She is so damn cute - I adore her personality. Until her leg fully heals she can't make it to the senior center so I'll visit her weekly to continue with our creative writing assignments. While she was in rehab we did our work over the phone because it helped keep her mind active when her body could not be. She wrote a story about attending nursing school in Oregon at the age of 18 and how she would sneak off to the woods with her boyfriend where they could "be bad." I didn't ask what her definition of bad entailed, maybe it was just hand holding back in those days, but knowing Bette, I'm guessing it was a bit more involved than that. I'll get more details in person I hope!

Now I'm going to make some muffins and fruit salad to bring to Bette and I certainly hope these odorous ants stay out of my way. I wonder if they would taste like coconut too?

We awoke to a day without dark clouds and rain and I feel good. No aches, no mental fog, just an overall feeling of peace and wellness. How I have missed this! Supposed to be sunny all day before the rain returns tomorrow so I will bask in it whilst I can.

And I'll leave you with this pic of Wrigs I took the day the clouds parted, Memorial day afternoon. I just love looking at it, it makes me smile.

:O)

Insect inside

We need insecticide for our insect inside. Is that where they came up with the name insecticide???

This guy was hanging out in our guest bath for a couple days. (Let's kindly ignore the slime/soap scum all over the walls. It's been a while since we've had any visitors and due to the spiderland that is our lower level, I opt to not spend too much time down there - unless of course, we have house guests.)



So now here's the big guy safely behind the plastic. The pest control guy said he is as big as they get around here and as you can see he even shriveled up a little since the above photo - that's because he was stuck in the shower and hadn't eaten for a few days. Poor guy. I asked if he might have been anyone's pet that may have wandered out of his terrarium and he didn't think so but assured me that he wouldn't kill him and would let him go outside far, far away from my home so he could find a feast of bugs in the forest. Happy ending for all.

We have also been blessed with odorous ants. They invaded our kitchen over the weekend and I thought I could take care of them with a few squirts of counter spray but that's not working out so well. The reason they're called odorous ants is that when they're crushed they exude a rotten coconut smell. Don't ever say you didn't learn anything from reading this blog.


So these guys run all over countertops, crawl out of the garbage disposal and climb the walls under the sink. Pest people put out some gel bait and warned me that the invasion is going to get a lot worse and that we are not supposed to kill them because they have to eat the poison and carry it back to the queen and kill the rest of the colony. We'll have 2 waves of colonies coming through (when they told me this I couldn't help but think of Jamestown and the early settlers and these ants dressed in george washington wigs shouting "no taxation without representation" in high squeaky voices) but within 10 days or so they should start to die off. So basically while I'm cooking meals I'll just sit there and watch the ants crawl all over our cookware and foodstuffs. DIET.

Good thing my Christmas party was last weekend. Yes, I had a Christmas party on Sunday, the day before Memorial Day. We set up lights, a tree even put the wreath back on the door and 2 little trees outside and played carols. After 10 minutes of Christmas music the guests got hostile and demanded I put on something else. We feasted on hot comfort foods, atop holiday plates and enjoyed red and green M&M's. (I just picked out the rest of the colors cuz it's not like you can buy Christmas M&M's this time of year. Maybe at some dollar stores you can but I didn't go looking that hard for them.) Anyway, doesn't look like we'll be entertaining any time soon as long as these rotten coconut stinkers are around.

Happy New Year!!

Juneary

I'm going to take a guess that the person/people who discovered this land mass along the Puget Sound, did so in the summer time, and they started construction to build the city and then fall/winter/spring hit and they said, "Oh shit, what did we do."

It's not unusual to get a month of rain/drizzle/showers/ all the terms sound the same to me, it's just wet stuff.





Here's that gray tarp I was trying to describe, pretty in the movies, but not when you spend your life underneath it. Claustrophobes Beware!



I think the meditations have been helping cuz I'm not in that dark place, in fact I feel like we're living in some sort of science experiment, testing our limits to see how much longer til we all snap and I now have this morbid curiosity about the weather patterns here and what causes this to happen. I never knew a pocket like this existed before and at this point (or at least for today, because it's June 4 and not yet 50 degrees) all I can do is laugh. hahahahohohohohehehehhehheeee

Newman

Rest in peace sweet beautiful boy.

I loved visiting you (and my cousins) and spoiling you. I loved snuggling you, laying in your dog bed. I loved your personality, your willingness to always please. I love you Newmie. You will be missed.

conversations with Tom

me:
So why can't they just blast through the mountains so the clouds have a way of escaping this part of the world...this so called CONVERGENCE ZONE?!?

Tom:
Laura, they don't salt the streets when it snows because they might kill a toad so I doubt they would blow up a mountain range.

me:
I'm not saying they have to blow through an entire range, they could just blast enough to make like an alley and then the rain clouds would be able to blow on through and leave this place.

Tom:
I think you'd need some giant fans to move these clouds.

me:
Now you're thinking!! Who can we write to? The President? Who can do this???

Tom:
I think he's busy with the oil spill.

me:
Well as soon as that's plugged, they need to get the F**K out here and do something!

Tom:
Ok, ok. Write your letter.

thought purge

I wanted to get some thoughts/feeling out while I'm somewhat able to think a bit clearer because sometimes it's difficult to sit and focus on writing happy things for this blog. It used to come naturally for me as I believe I used to be a happy person. The reason I started this blog was to share happiness with others because I felt I had a lot of it in my heart to give. In fact, I started this blog during a difficult time in my life (5 months after my Dad passed away) which is kind of strange now that I think about it. Let's start a happy blog after the death of a parent, what fun! But I've realized a couple of differences between coping with the death of my father and moving here to Seattle.

First the death of my father is permanent. Unless we opted to freeze him cyrogenically he's not coming back. And even though losing him was one of the hardest things I've ever had to deal with, I was able to process the feelings and emotions associated with death and accept them and continue to move ahead. That doesn't mean I don't miss him every single day, but I don't dwell in the sadness of the loss because there is nothing in my control to change it. I have no other choice but to accept it. Now with moving to Seattle, I keep thinking, it's not permanent, we (or maybe just me) could be on a plane tomorrow and go somewhere else. I have not come to accept this place as home because I still have options out there. I can telecommute and live somewhere else but I know that is not going to best for my marriage. But yet my marriage is not always at its best when I'm living in this constant state of fighting this place so hard. And why do I fight it? Well the plain, simple fact is the weather has severely depressed me. I know sometimes I make light of it and laugh about 13 of the last 14 days straight rain, 40+ degree temps while I'm walking the dog in my mittens and trying to stay dry at the same time...at the end of May. But after living here over a year and a half I have a good enough grasp to know that this is really taking its toll on my mental health.

When we moved out of the midwest to California so many people would say, "Oh you're going to miss those seasons!" Well I thought I would but I didn't. The only time I felt a pang for another season was on Christmas Day, but other than that I never looked back. When we moved here I remember my mom saying, "Oh at least you'll have the seasons again!" And now after living here I don't really see distinctions between the seasons aside from summer. Although the winter of 2008 did get a TON of snow and that was pretty cool, but it was out of the ordinary. I feel like October through March (this year though it's been through May) is pretty much the same season. 40's and 50's (which is great because it's never that cold in the winter, maybe 20's for the absolute low) but just so dark and wet. Now we do get flowers that bloom in what should be spring time and the trees are sooo green and lush but the sky is consistently draped in what feels like a giant gray tarp for many, many months. It is rare to get more than 3 straight days of clear skies during the months of October to March and to me a season is more than just a few days peppered into a month's time. There's that darkness that just hangs in the sky and each day it feels like it's closing in, closer and closer until you can no longer breathe. Could it be scientific and maybe related to barometric pressure in the air that causes one to struggle with breath or is it the fact that the clouds are so visibly low in the sky you feel like you could touch them? Either way it puts my head in such a fog to where I can't think straight and the flood gates of depression have opened and it affects my marriage, my work, and my interactions with others. And that is something new that I'm having a hard time coping with. Maybe I've been prone to this all my life and living here just brought it all out but I never remember feeling this way, even when we lived in Minnesota for those 11 months. And there is nothing like the cold in Minnesota to make one crazy but this is a different crazy, just a heaviness that weighs you down. Just this year alone, it has averaged 21 days a month of rain. And there are times when it will stop and there will be an afternoon beam of sun and believe me I do my best to get out there and soak it in if I can but it's just not enough to sustain my mind and quell those dark thoughts/fears. It got so bad this last Saturday that I had a panic attack and strongly believed that the world was coming to an end because human beings can't live like this and we are all going to die. Now as I type that out here I can sort of see the irrationality in it but I need some way to clear my head from the darkness because I know it will happen again, however irrational it may seem. I strongly feel that if my Dad had passed away while we were living here, I would have never started a blog about Living Happy. I don't think I could have handled his death when I'm overcome with this darkness inside and probably could have done something completely irreversible because when I'm in that funk there seems absolutely no other way out. Everything else you have to deal with seems magnified 100 times and you just want to say F this, it's not worth it. I'm not alone in feeling this way and that should make me feel a little better (not as foreign) but it actually makes me more sad knowing others are struggling so much as well. I tried to prepare myself for living here but anticipating it and living it day in and day out after a year and a half are two completely different things. And if you are not prone to depression this can be difficult to understand but this is a very challenging place to be especially when you have a panic attack just by looking out the window. Wow I didn't expect to write so much on that but as you can tell it's been bubbling up.

So, this weekend after my melt down, we started thinking of ways to deal with this because what I've done thus far is barely keeping me sane. On Sunday, the rain finally stopped early afternoon and then slowly, out came the sun. Tom and I rushed home to get Wrigs and walk him outside and one by one everyone starting opening their doors just standing in their driveways/yards staring up at the sky. It was like something out of children of the corn. I thought how comical the whole scene was, especially for those who LOVE the benefits of the sun but yet have to endure months of darkness to enjoy it. Seattle is a gorgeous landscape when the sun is out, I just feel the many months of depression to get those fleeting moments of feeling good again aren't enough to sustain me. My bones have been aching (another sign of severely lacking in Vitamin D, lucky for Tom, he is too) and I thought it was because I got some of those tone up shoes. Well when the sun came out yesterday my aches and pains started to go away. I felt my body relax, I had ZERO stomach issues and I could again, process and think things through and find solutions/perspective to situations in my life. And that felt soooo good.

There are a couple coffee shops in town I frequent on weekend mornings and have become acquaintances with a few of the regulars. I met this woman back in Feb or March and we started talking about life and she was so down, on the verge of tears. She is going through a messy divorce, has 3 unruly teenagers and is also taking care of an aging parent (or parents, I'm not sure if it was plural). She was so visibly depressed, I really thought she was going to go off the deep end and drive her car off a bridge. I gave her one of my bracelets made with healing beads and told her that I would be praying for her strength through all of the things she is dealing with. I saw her just a few weeks ago and she was a completely different person. I said things must be so much better you are beaming! She told me that no, nothing has changed in her life, things are still the same but she just got back from visiting her sister in Arizona and she feels like a new person. She said as soon as her youngest is through with high school she is going to move there. Just ONE solid week of sun worked wonders for her mind and cleared the negativity in her head and she felt like a new person with a new start. She said her problems are always going to be there but she can cope with them better when she's not so depressed. I know the issues I'm dealing with in my little life are not as drastic as hers but I 100% know where she's coming from. And now that she has a plan in motion she is much more upbeat, light hearted and when I looked at her this time I even thought, she is happy.

Amazing how that works. People benefit tremendously from the vitamins and warmth from the sun. Why else do people retire to warm, sunny places?

So that's where I'm at. I need to come to a place of acceptance but it's still very much a work in progress.